AmCham arrow Publications arrow Topics Archive arrow Topics Archive 2007 arrow Vol.37- No.10 arrow Travel and Leisure: A Year in the Isles of Wind
Travel and Leisure: A Year in the Isles of Wind PDF Print E-mail

Penghu has much to recommend it, especially the idyllic beaches and ubiquitous, imposing temples. But you'd be well advised to avoid the long windy season. BY JOSHUA SAMUEL BROWN

 

Not long into my wife's one year contract at a small school here in Penghu, we both realized we were desperate to leave.

I know what you're thinking: If this is a travel article, we're off to a bad start. Travel articles are supposed to make readers want to visit the place being written about, and here I'm confessing to wanting nothing more than to see Penghu shrink into a speck from the window of a Taipei-bound airplane. But the reader will hopefully forgive a writer's indulgence, with the promise that this article will elucidate as it complains. Love at first sight is a great inspiration for song lyrics; picking a place to live on the same impulse may not, however, be the brightest idea. Hence, that we fell in love with Penghu when we first saw it might well have given us pause. We'd come to Penghu to research the archipelago's tourist-lure factor for a chapter in the soon to be released seventh edition of Lonely Planet: Taiwan. But in the back of my mind - and that of my then fiancée - was a vague idea that if Penghu had enough on the ball to attract tourists, it might have enough to keep us there for a year or so as I finished writing the guide and began whatever future projects might come down the pike.

When we first saw the archipelago from the air, a sandy string of pearls floating on a sapphire-blue sea, we knew we'd found a contender. The shape of the main land mass - a somewhat mangled horseshoe, thicker on one side, surrounding a clear blue bay - promised endless beaches to explore and long roads for bicycling. We were nearly sold before the plane had even landed at Magong airport.

Early explorations did nothing to diminish our enthusiasm. The beaches - long strips of white sand butting up against the ocean - were as tropically idyllic up close as they'd been through the plane window, and even in late October the water was still fine for swimming. Beaches aside, we were struck by how culture-steeped the place seemed; every hamlet we passed seemed to have at least one temple, and often more. And importantly, Magong - Penghu's only city - seemed to boast a strong enough local economy (based on a combination of fishing and tourism) to support numerous restaurants, a movie theatre, and a few English schools where my wife-to-be might find employment as I got down into the nitty-gritty of transforming months of notes into the 80,000 words that would become my half of the Taiwan guide.

So we both said "why not?" to a year on these islands promising beaches, culture, and apparently excellent weather. Landing a teaching job was easy enough for my fiancée, though it was Amy, the departing teacher, who provided the first hint that our new island home might not be the paradise it seemed at first. "Penghu is nice," she told us as she packed her suitcase, perhaps a bit too eagerly. "But you'll get tired of fish, noodles, and wind before too long. Trust me."

Nautical crossroads
But before going past the halcyon early days of our year in Penghu and into the long months of near constant typhoon-speed winds, endless stares, and culinary boredom, a reasonable condensation of the archipelago's long and storied history is in order. Situated at an extremely strategic point roughly halfway between mainland China and Taiwan, Penghu has had the historical good (or bad, depending on your point of view) luck to lie at a nautical crossroads for merchants, militarists, and pirates plying the seas between Japan and Southeast Asia. For this reason, the islands - best known in the West as the Pescadores - have long been in the crosshairs of colonizing powers from Asia and Europe, eager to possess this well-placed toehold in the Taiwan Strait. Though Penghu was marginally under the control of the Ming Dynasty during the period when the Ming held sway throughout China, in 1622 the Dutch became the first Westerners to attempt permanent settlements there. Before long, however, the still-powerful Ming imperial court managed to persuade the Dutch to forsake Penghu for Taiwan. Later, as the Ming fell, Penghu was a crucial way station for Ming loyalist Koxinga, who after deforesting the island of Kinmen, stopped in Penghu on his way to Taiwan.

Integrated into the Qing empire in 1683, Penghu spent the next few centuries being visited for various lengths of time by a motley collection of foreign forces; except for the Dutch, who tended to build in stone, little in the way of foreign footprints from this period remain. What does remain from Penghu's distant past are numerous ancient villages, most notably the beautifully preserved (and well worth visiting) Erkan Village on the westernmost island of Hsiyu. Centuries-old houses in this town - a living museum - are built of stone and coral, and most villagers trace their ancestry back to the original Chen brothers who came from Kinmen following Koxinga's disastrous lack of sense of forest management.

In 1895 the Japanese empire colonized Penghu along with the rest of Taiwan, building a plethora of buildings around Magong city in that peculiar Asian/Western hybrid style that the Japanese fancied back then. Many of these structures are still there. Not ones to step lightly, the Japanese also knocked down the wall ringing the old city, leaving only Shuncheng Gate standing for future shutterbugs.

No article on Penghu would be complete without mention of the archipelago's abundance of temples. These are no mere roadside prayer-shacks - we're talking full blown three-and-five story Buddhist and Taoist maxi-malls, replete with statues, carved granite columns, alters to Matsu, and more, not to mention some of the most ornate temple artwork you're likely to find on either side of the Strait. These ostentatious places of worship are clustered in sets of one, two, and three in small towns all over the islands.

In between these towns (most of which boast the population of a Hsinchu cram school on a Wednesday afternoon), there is little else. The effect of coming across one of these enormous multi-layered complexes after 10 minutes of riding through empty scrubland offers a striking juxtaposition. It's weird, like seeing Taipei 101 jutting from the side of Jade Mountain, or coming across the Core Pacific Mall...well, anywhere, actually.

Naturally, there's a reason behind Penghu's tremendous cultural wealth, though it has more to do with the economics of brain drain than spirituality. Stopping at a temple to chat with locals - mostly elderly - we heard different versions of pretty much the same story.

"Who built this temple?"
"Ah, this temple was built by Mr. Chen. He was born and raised here, but moved to Taiwan, started a successful company, and got rich. He built this temple in his hometown as a way of honoring his ancestors!"
"Sounds like a devoted man. Does he ever come back?"
"Every lunar new year. At least he used to. But he's missed the last few years..."
Reading between the lines tells a more complete story:
* Local boy leaves a town offering little opportunity outside of the dried-fish trade, promising to return once he's made it big and share his largess with the village that nurtured him.
* Next, local boy strikes it rich in Taiwan or Mainland China, along the way getting used to creature comforts like restaurants that stay open past nine and supermarkets with imported-food sections, perhaps even acquiring a city-born wife who nixes the idea of spending her golden years (or any years, for that matter) discussing methods of sea-urchin preparation with windswept neighbors.
* Local boy - now a worldly man torn between duty and pragmatism - comes up with a culturally acceptable solution: Build the largest and most ostentatious temple he can afford in the tiny hamlet in which he was raised (but has long outgrown). Penghu is full of stories like these, brought to life by these audaciously crafted wood and granite temples, lying largely empty by the side of the road.

Incessant howling
Our early days in late autumn on Penghu were fine as we explored the beaches and temples. The weather was breezy, but nothing too extreme. But around Christmas the winds picked up, and by mid-January they were up to what Penghu residents refer to as "normal speed." At one point during the Lunar New Year holiday, I asked a neighbor when the winds might end. "June," she answered.

The ruthless wind, though largely absent in the summer months, is Peng- hu's most prominent off-season feature, giving trees on the island their pronounced southward tilt. The implications of a half year in a wind tunnel dawned on us before winter had even begun. A constant howl raged outside the windows of our ninth-story apartment, a whining that ranged in pitch, volume, and intensity without ever going away. Every waking moment seemed to have an eerie tinge, and I found myself thinking more and more of switching from travel to horror writing. My fiancée took to blasting loud punk rock music at all hours to counter the horrible droning. In heavy rain, the wind would drive the water horizontally into the glass of the windows with a deafening thud, as if someone were aiming a fire hose at them.

On sunny days we made the best of it, going out for long bicycle rides on Penghu's wide and largely traffic-free roads. On good days our rides were fairly evenly split between agonizingly slow pedal-mashing headwind slogs and screamingly fast tailwind sprints. On bad days, the winds just pushed our bikes sideways.

By early spring, a deep sense of isolation had set in. All of the ROC's outer islands have a remote feel, but in Penghu the isolation is especially pronounced. From Kinmen and Matsu you can see a large body of land on the horizon (even if you couldn't legally get to it in pre-"mini links" days), and Green Island and Lanyu feel somewhat connected to Taitung. Geographically and culturally, Penghu feels alone in a vast blue sea. Perhaps more so than the wind, this is the reason only a handful of Westerners call Penghu home for long. There are a few; one of our friends is an Australian surfer (of some renown back home) who came to Penghu specifically for surf and isolation. A few foreign windsurfers have also settled on Penghu, arguably one of the best spots for the sport on the globe. But for the most part, Western faces on the island are few and far between.

Amy had mentioned in passing that on Penghu we'd feel like rock stars. Being naive, I assumed she meant we'd be offered access to cheap drugs and easy sex; alas, this did not turn out to be the case. What she really meant was that Penghu people retain a tendency that most Taiwanese have thankfully outgrown - the compulsion to stare at foreigners. Penghu people are not shy when it comes to staring. Or pointing. Or calling their friends over to look for themselves before staring some more, as if they were confronted with beings completely alien, curious, or mildly distasteful. Had Amy substituted the words "burn victim" for "rock star" she'd have been closer to the mark. It was this combination of local fascination and boredom that turned our wedding into a small media circus. When Laurie and I finally made it official at the Magong courthouse, someone - perhaps an employee inside the oddly Soviet-looking building - took the liberty of informing the local press that two Westerners were about to tie the knot. Before we'd even gotten to the walking-down-the-aisle part of what we assumed would be a quick and mostly private ceremony, a TV-news crew showed up with a couple of print journalists not far behind. After editing, the most important day of our lives had been transformed into a seven-minute human interest segment aired that night on Penghu TV.

Being unexpected local news celebrities wasn't necessarily a bad thing. At least, we were able to convince ourselves (sometimes) that people were staring at us because they'd seen us on television, and not just because we happened to sport a mildly different shade of melanin. Perhaps it was because the incident happened in the summer, when the winds had finally died down, or maybe it was because the wedding happened well past the midway point in our one-year contract, but as the summer progressed we began to feel a bit more integrated into the local scene. Friends began opening up to us on a variety of local issues, like the ongoing yet unsettled plans to open up the island to casino gambling, which most people seem unhappy about but resigned to ("it will bring bad people to Penghu," our friend who runs a coffee cart told us) and other plans to open Penghu up to mainland tourists ("more lucrative than gambling and probably not as detrimental," opined another friend).

As our year comes to a close, we find ourselves alternating between eagerness to leave and regret, considering that by and large Penghu has been fairly good to us. Too windy for all but the most determined to put down roots, the archipelago has instead proven itself a reasonable perch from which to contemplate future plans. The world is filled with spots that fit well under the heading: "A great place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there." After nearly12 months here, we think Penghu fits that description to a tee. And if such places aren't worth writing about, where else is?
 
[ Back ]